THE NATIVE SON 



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BY 



2(s>7. INEZ HAYNES IRWIN 
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THE NATIVE SON 




FROM COLOR ETCHING BY JOHN T. LEMOS 

SUNSET GLOW 

Looking toward the Golden Gate from the 

University of California 



THE NATIVE SON 

BY 

INEZ HAYNES IRWIN 

AUTHOR OF 

" THE CALIFORNIACS " 

"ANGEL ISLAND" 

"THE LADY OF KINGDOMS" 

"PHOEBE AND ERNEST" 



SAN FRANCISCO 

A.M.ROBERTSON 

MCMXIX 






COPYRIGHT. 1919 

BY 

A. M. ROBERTSON 



i^uv 23 1919 



(Q)Ci.A5Gi24 7 



fy 



^§;™^ 



TO THOSE 

PROUD NATIVE SONS 

JAMES W. COFFROTH 
MEYER COHN PORTER GARNETT 

JOHN CROWLEY WILLIE RITCHIE 

J. CAL EWING JAMES WILSON 

ANDREW J. GALLAGHER 

AND TO THOSE 

APOLOGETIC ADOPTED SONS 



ALBERT M. BENDER 
SAM BERGER 
GELETT BURGESS 
MICHAEL CASEY 
PATRICK FLYNN 
WILL IRWIN 
ANTON JOHANSEN 



AUSTIN LEWIS 
XAVIER MARTINEZ 
PERRY NEWBERRY 
PATRICK o'bRIEN 
FREMONT OLDER 
LEMUEL PARTON 
PAUL SCHARRENBERG 



WALDEMAR YOUNG 

ALL OF WHOM HAVE PLAYED 

SOME GRACEFUL PART IN TRANSLATING 

CALIFORNIA TO ME 



THIS APPRECIATION IS DEDICATED 




THE NATIVE SON 

HE only drawback to writ- 
ing about California is that 
scenery and climate — and 
weather even — will creep 
in. Inevitably anything you 
produce sounds like a cross between 
a railroad folder and a circus program. 
You can't discuss the people without 
describing their background ; for they 
reflect it perfectly; or their climate, 
because it has helped to make them 
the superb beings they are. A ten- 
dency manifests itself in you to revel 
in superlatives and to wallow in italics. 
You find yourself comparing adjectives 
that cannot be compared — unique for 
instance. Unique is a persistent temp- 
tation. For, the rules of grammar not- 
withstanding, California is really the 



2 THE NATIVE SON 

most unique spot on the earth's sur- 
face. As for adjectives like enormous, 
colossaly surpassing, overpowering and 
nouns like marvel, wonder, grandeur, 
vastness, they are as common in your 
copy as commas. 

Another difficulty is that nobody out- 
side California ever believes you. I 
don't blame them. Once I didn't 
believe it myself. If there was anything 
that formerly bored me to the marrow 
of my soul, it was talk about California 
by a regular dyed-in-the-wool Califor- 
niac. But I got mine ultimately. Even 
as I was irritated, I now irritate. Even 
as I was bored, I now bore. Ever since 
I first saw California, and became, 
inevitably, a Californiac, I have been 
talking about it, irritating and boring 
uncounted thousands. I begin placat- 
ingly enough, **Yes, I know you aren't 
going to believe this," I say. **Once I 
didn't believe it myself. I realize that 
it all sounds impossible. But after 



THE NATIVE SON 3 

you've once been there " Then 

Tm off. When I Ve finished, there isn't 
an hysterical superlative adjective or a 
complimentary abstract noun unused 
in my vocabulary. I've told all the 
East about California. I've told many 
of the countries of Europe about Cali- 
fornia. I even tell Californians about 
California. I vv^ill say to the credit of 
Californians though that t/iey listen. 
Listen! did I ^^.j listen? They drink 
it down like a child absorbing its first 
fairy tale. 

In another little volume devoted to 
the praise of California, Willie Britt is 
on record as saying that he'd rather be 
a busted lamp-post on Battery Street 
than the Waldorf-Astoria. I said once 
that I'd rather be sick in California 
than well anywhere else. I'm prepared 
to go further. I'd rather be in prison 
in California than free anywhere else. 
San Quentin is without doubt the most 
delightfully situated prison in the whole 



4 TEE NATIVE SON 

world. Besides I have a lot of friends 
— but I won't go into that now. Any- 
way if I ever do get that severe jail- 
sentence which a long-suffering family 
has always prophesied for me, I'm 
going to petition for San Quentin. 
Moreover, I would rather talk about 
California than any other spot on earth. 
I 'd rather write about California than 
any other spot on earth. Is it possible 
that any Californian Chamber of Com- 
merce has to pay a press agent? In- 
credible ! Inexplicable ! I wonder that 
local millionaires don't bid their entire 
fortune for the privilege. Now what 
has Willie Britt to say? 

Yes, my idea of a pleasant occupation 
would be listing, cataloguing, invent- 
orying, describing and — oh joy! — 
visiting the wonders of California. But 
that would be impossible for any one 
enthusiast to accomplish in the mere 
three-score-and-ten of Scriptural allot- 
ment. Methusalah might have at- 



THE NATIVE SON 5 

tempted it. But in these short-lived 
days, ridiculous to make a start. And 
so, perforce, I must share this joy- 
ous task with other and more able 
chroniclers. I am willing to leave the 
beauty of the scenery to Mary Austin, 
the wonder of the weather to Jesse 
Williams, the frenzy of its politics to 
Sam Blythe, the beauty of its women 
to Julian Street, the glory of the old 
San Francisco to Will Irwin, the splen- 
dor of the new San Francisco to Rufus 
Steele, its care-free atmosphere to Allan 
Dunn, if I may place my laurel wreath 
at the foot of the Native Son. Indeed, 
when it comes to the Native Son, I 
yield the privilege of praise to no one. 
For the Native Son is an unique pro- 
duct, as distinctively and characteristi- 
cally Californian as the gigantic red- 
wood, the flower festival, the ferocious 
flea, the moving-picture film, the 
annual boxing and tennis champion, 
the golden poppy or the purple prune. 



6 THE NATIVE SON 

There is only one other CaUfornian 
product that can compare with him 
and that's the Native Daughter. 
And as for the Native Daughter — — 
But if I start up that squirrel track 
ril never get back to the trail. Never- 
theless some day I 'm going to pick out 
a diamond-pointed pen, dip it in wine 
and on paper made from orange-tawny 
poppy petals, try to do justice to the 
Native Daughter. For this inflexible 
moment, however, my subject is the 
Native Son. But if scenery and climate 
— and weather even — do creep in, don't 
blame me. Remember I warned you. 
Besides sooner or later I shall be sure 
to get back to the main theme. 

In the January of 1917 I made my 
annual pilgrimage to California. On 
the train was a Native Son who was 
the hero of the following astonishing 
tale. He was one of a large family, of 
which the only girl had married a 
German, a professor in an American 



THE NATIVE SON 7 

university. Shortly before the Great 
War, the German brother-in-law went 
back to the Fatherland to spend his 
sabbatical year in study at a German 
university. Letters came regularly 
for a while after the war began ; then 
they stopped. His wife was very much 
worried. Our hero decided in his 
simple western fashion to go to Ger- 
many and find his brother-in-law. He 
travelled across the country, caj oiled 
the authorities in Washington into giv- 
ing him a passport, crossed the ocean, 
ran the British blockade and entered 
the forbidden land. Straight as an ar- 
row he went to the last address in his 
brother-in-law's letters. That gentle- 
man, coming home to his lunch, tired, 
worried and almost penniless, found his 
Californian kinsman smoking calmly 
in his room. The Native Son left 
money enough to pay for the rest of 
the year of study and the journey home. 
Then he started on the long trip back. 



8 THE NATIVE SON 

In the English port at which his ship 
touched, he was mistaken for a disloyal 
newspaper man for whom the British 
Secret Service had long been seeking. 
He was arrested, searched and submit- 
ted to a very disquieting third degree. 
When they asked him in violent 
explosive tones what he went into 
Germany for, he replied in his mild, 
unexcited Western voice — to give his 
brother-in-law some money. All Eu- 
rope is accustomed to crazy Americans 
of course, but this strained credulity to 
the breaking point; for nobody who 
has not tried to travel in the war coun- 
tries can realize the sheer unbelieva- 
bility of such guilelessness. The British 
laughed loud and long. His papers 
were taken away and sent to London 
but in a few days everything was re- 
turned. A mistake had been made, the 
authorities admitted, and proper apolo- 
gies were tendered. But they released 
him with looks and gestures in which 



TEE NATIVE SON 9 

an abashed bewilderment struggled 
with a growing irritation. 

That is a typical Native Son story. 

If you are an Eastener and meet the 
Native Son first in New York (and the 
only criticism to be brought against 
him is that he sometimes chooses — 
think of that — chooses to live outside 
his native State ! ) you wonder at the 
clear-eyed composure, the calm-vis- 
ioned unexcitability with which he 
views the metropolis. There is a story 
of a San Francisco newspaper man who 
landed for the first time in New York 
early in the morning. Before night he 
had explored the city, written a scathing 
philippic on it and sold it to a leading 
newspaper. New York had not daunted 
him. It had only annoyed him. He was 
quite impervious to its hydra-headed 
appeal. But you don't get the answer 
to that imperviousness until you visit 
the California which has produced the 
Native Son. Then you understand. 



10 THE NATIVE SON 

For the Native Son 
Yes, Reader, your has come from a State 

worst fears are jus- « « < , . 

tifiedjrm going to whose back yard is 
talk about scenery, two hundred thousand 

But don't say that ^ ^ ^^jj^g (^^^^.^ ^j. 

I did nt warn you! % \ r ^ • 

However, as it's got less) of American con- 
to be done some- tinent and whose front 

time, why not now? i • r i it 

I'll be perfectly fair, Y^^^ IS five hundred 

though; so— thousand square miles 

(less or more) or Pa- 
cific Ocean, whose back fence is ten 
thousand miles (or thereabouts) of 
bristling snow-capped mountains and 
whose front hedge is ten thousand 
miles (or approximately) of golden 
foam-topped combers; a State that 
looks up one clear and unimpeded 
waterway to the evasive North Pole, 
and down another clear and unimpeded 
waterway to the elusive South Pole and 
across a third clear and unimpeded water 
way straight to the magical, mystical, 
mysterious Orient. This sense of ampli- 
tude gives the Native Son an air of su- 



TEE NATIVE SON: 11 

periority . . . Yes, you're quite 
right, it Aas a touch of superciHousness 
— very difficult to understand and much 
more difficult to endure when you 
haven't seen California; but completely 
understandable and endurable when 
you have. 

Man helped nature — Califomiacs read 

to place Italy, Spain, ^"^'^ T\u^^^"^' 

' ^ 1 erners skip this pa- 

Japan among the won- ragraph— 

der regions of the 

world; but nature placed California 

there without assistance from anybody. 

I do not refer alone to the scenery of 

California which is duplicated in no 

other spot of the sidereal system ; nor 

to the climate which matches it; nor 

to its super-mundane fertility, nor to 

its super-solar fecundity. The railroad 

folder with its voluble vocabulary has 

already beaten me to it. I do not refer 

solely to that rich yellow-and-violet, 

springtime bourgeoning which turns 

California into one huge Botticelli 



12 TEE NATIVE SON 

background of flower colors and sheens. 
I do not refer to that heavy purple-and- 
gold, autumn fruitage, which changes 
it to a theme for Titian and Veronese, 
I am thinking particularly of those 
surprising phenomena left over from 
pre-historic eras; the **big*' trees — 
the sequoia giganteuy which really be- 
long to the early fairy-tales of H. G. 
Wells, and to those other trees, not 
so big but still giants — the sequoia sent- 
pivirens or redwoods, which make of 
California forests black-and-silver com- 
positions of filmy fluttering light and 
solid bedded shade. I am thinking 
also of that patch of pre-historic cypres- 
ses in Monterey. These differ from 
the straight, symmetrical classic red- 
woods as Rodin's ** Thinker" differs 
from the Apollo. Monstrous, con- 
torted shapes — those Monterey cypres- 
ses look like creatures born under- 
ground, who, at the price of almost 
unbearable torture, have torn through 



THE NATIVE 80N 13 

the earth's crust, thrusting and twisting 
themselves airward. I refer even to 
that astonishing detail in the general 
Calif ornian sulphitism, the seals which 
frequent beach rocks close to the shore, 
a short car ride from the heart of a city 
as big as San Francisco. 

California, because —and this— 
of rich gold deposits, 
and a richer golden sunshine, its 
golden spring poppy and its golden 
summer verdure, seems both literally 
and figuratively, a golden land gold- 
en and gay. It is a land full of 
contradictions however. For those 
amazing memorials from a prehistoric 
past give it in places a strange air of 
tragedy. I challenge this grey old 
earth to produce a strip of country more 
beautiful, also more poignant and catas- 
trophic in natural connotation, than the 
one which includes these cypresses of 
Monterey. Yet this same mordant area 
holds Point Lobos, a headland which 



14 TEE NATIVE SON 

displays in moss and lichens all the 
minute delicacy of a gleeful, elfin 
world. I challenge the earth to pro- 
duce a region more beautiful, yet also 
more gay and debonair in natural con- 
notation, than the one which enfolds 
San Francisco. For here the water 
presents gorgeous, plastic color, alter- 
nating blue and gold. Here Mount Ta- 
malpais lifts its long straight slopes out 
of the sea and thrusts them high in the 
sky. Here Marin County offers contours 
of dimpled velvet bursting with a gay ir- 
ridescence of wild flowers. Yet that same 
gracious area frames the grim cliff-cup 
which holds San Francisco bay — a spot 
of Dantesque sheerness and bareness. 
This is what nature 
—and this. has done. But man has 

added his deepening 
touch in one direction and his enliven- 
ing touch in another. The early fathers 
— Spanish — erected Missions from one 
end of the State to the other. These 



THE NATIVE SON 15 

are time-mellowed, mediaeval struc- 
tures with bell-towers, cloisters and 
gardens, sun-baked, shadow-colored; 
and in spots they make California as 
old and sad as Spain. Later emigrants 
— French — have built in the vicinity 
of San Francisco many tiny roadside 
inns where one can drink the soft wines 
of the country. Framed in hills that 
are garlanded with vineyards, these inns 
are often mere rose-hidden bowers. 
They make California seem as gay as 
France. I can best put it by saying 
that I know of no place so ''haunted'* 
in every poetic and plaintive sense as 
California; yet I know of no place so 
perfectly suited to carnival and festival. 
All of this is parf of the reason why 
you can't surprise a Calif ornian. 



16 THE NATIVE SON 

This looks like a \rES, California is 

respite, but there's X i_ •£ i 

no real relief in sight DeaUtltUl. 

Easterners. Keep OnCC Upon a time, 

right on reading, a Native Son lay dying. 

Califomiacs! xx f i 11 

He did not know that 
he was going to die. His physician 
had to break the news to him. He 
told the Californian that the process 
would not be long or painful. He 
would go to sleep presently and when 
he woke up, the great journey would 
have been accomplished. His words 
fulfilled themselves. Soon the Native 
Son fell into a coma. When he opened 
his eyes he was in Paradise. He raised 
himself up, gave one look about and 
exclaimed, *'What a boob that doctor 
was! Whad'da he mean — Paradise! 
Here I am still in California.'* 

Man has of course, here as elsewhere, 
chained nature; set her to toil for him. 
She is a willing worker everywhere, 
but in California she puts no stay nor 



THE NATIVE SON 17 

Stint on her productive efforts. Cali- 
fornia produces — Now up to this 
moment I have held myself in. Look- 
ing back on my copy I see only such 
meager words as *^ beauty'*, '* glory", 
** splendor", such pale, inadequate 
phrases as * ^super-mundane fertility" 
and *' super-solar fecundity". What 
use are words and phrases when one 
speaks of California. It is time for us 
to abandon them both and resort to 
some bright, snappy sparkling statistics. 

So here goes! 

California produces forty per cent of 
the gold, fifty per cent of the wheat, 
sixty per cent of the oranges, seventy 
per cent of the prunes, eighty per cent 
of the asparagus and 
(including the Native Reader, i had to 
Daughters) ninety- f'^^^^^ ^^^' ^ 

° / . -^ I gave you the cor- 

nine and ninety- nine rect statistics, you 
one-hundredthsper wouldn't believe me. 
cent of the peaches of 
the world. I pause to say here that none 



18 TEE NATIVE SON 

of these figures is true. They are all 
made up for the occasion. But don't 
despair! I am sure that they don't do 
California justice by half. Any other 
Calif orniac — with the mathematical 
memory which I unfortunately lack — 
will provide the correct data. Some- 
body told me once, I seem to recall, 
that the Santa Clara valley produces 
sixty per cent of the world's prunes. 
But I may be mistaken. What I prefer 
to remember is one day's trip in that 
springtide of prune bloom. For hours 
and hours of motor speed, we glided 
through a snowy world that showed 
no speck of black bark or fleck of green 
leaf; a world in which the sole relief 
from a silent white blizzard of blossom 
was the blue of the sky arch, the purple 
of distant lupines alternating with the 
gold of blood-centered poppies, pour- 
ing like avalanches down hills of emer- 
ald green. 

That's what California produces in 



TEE NATIVE SON 19 

the way of scenery and Getting out of the 

r 1 1 o 1 > scenery zone only to 

fodder. So now, let s fan mto the climate 

consider the cUmate, zone. Reader, it's 

even if I am invading j"^* ^l^ ^f "^^ ""l^ 

TT7-1T .the climate as the 

Jesse W llhams 8 tern- scenery, it's got to 

tory. For it has magi- ^® ^o"® ^^^^ *'"^^' 

■, . 1 1 . so why not now ? 

cal properties — that ch- 
mate of Cahfornia. It makes people 
grow big and beautiful and strenuous ; 
it makes flowers grow big and beauti- 
ful ; it makes fleas grow big and stren- 
uous. It offers, except in the most 
southern or the most mountainous re- 
gions, no such extremes of heat or cold 
as are found elsewhere in the country. 
Its marvel is of course the season which 
corresponds to our winter. The visitor 
coming, let us say in February, from 
the ice-bound and frost-locked East 
through the flat, dreary Middle West, 
and stalled possibly on the way, remains 
glued in stupefaction to the car window. 
In a very few hours he slides from the 
white, glittering snow-covered heights 



20 TEE NATIVE SON 

of the evergreen-packed Sierras through 
their purple, hazy, snow-filled depths 
into the sudden warmth of California. 
It is like waking suddenly from a 
nightmare of winter to a poet's or a 
painter's vision of spring. 

At one side, perhaps 

Who, having seen ^j^g^ ^^ ^^^ ^^^^ ^^^^ 
this picture in Janu- . 

ary, could resist de- hllls, on whlch the llVC 

scribing it? East- oaks Spread big, ebon- 
y^u^s JeoSice! emerald umbrellas, ser- 
pentine endlessly into 
the distance. On the other side, far 
hills, bathed in an amethystine mist, 
invade the horizon. Between stretches 
the flat green field of the valley, gashed 
with tawny streaks that are roads and 
dotted with soft, silvery bunches that 
are frisking new-born lambs. Little 
white houses, with a coquettish air of 
perpetual summer, flaunt long windows 
and wooden-lace balconies. Early roses 
flask pink flames here and there. The 
green-black meshes of the eucalyptus 



TEE NATIVE SON 21 

hedges film the distance. The madrone, 
richly leaved like the laurel, reflects the 
sunlight from a bole glistening as though 
freshly carved from wet gold. 

The race — a blend 
of many rich bloods— ^ ^!^^f "p ^ f^ ''^ 

-^ . getting out of scen- 

that California has ery and climate into 

evolved with the help 
of this scenery and climate is a rare 
brew. The physical background is 
Anglo-Saxon of course; and it still 
breaks through in the prevailing Anglo- 
Saxon type. To this, the Celt has 
brought his poetry and mysticism. To 
it, the Latin has contributed his art 
instinct; and not art instinct alone but 
in an infinity of combinations, the dig- 
nity of the Spaniard, the spirit of the 
French, the passion of the Italian. 

All the foregoing is 

—into— put in, not to make it 

harder, but because — 

as a Californiac — I couldn't help it, 

and to show you what, in the way of 



22 THE NATIVE SON 

a State, the Native Son is accustomed 
to. You will have to admit that it is 
some State. The emblem on the Cali- 
fornia flag is singularly apposite — it's 
a bear. 

And if, in addition 
oh boy I - ^Q ^^^ ^ Calif ornian, 

San Francisco! i . -vt • o ... 

this Native Son visiting 
the East for the first time, is also a San 
Franciscan, he has come from a city 
which is, with the exception of peace- 
time Paris, the gayest and with the 
exception of none, the happiest city in 
the world; a city of extraordinary pic- 
turesqueness of situation and an equally 
notable cosmopolitanism of atmos- 
phere; a city which is, above all cities, 
a paradise for men. 

San Francisco, which invents much 
American slang, must have provided 
that phrase — '"this man's town." For 
that is what San Francisco is — a man's 
town. 

San Francisco, or **the city", as 



THE NATIVE SON 23 

Calif ornians so proudly ' ^^^^ "«* ^pp^^i 

, , . , 1 to Easterners; but 

and lovingly term her, caiifomiacs, i ask 
is peculiarly f ortuate in you how could i for- 
her situation and her .^'.'^ /^^'^'r 

thing about ** the 

weather. Riding a city"? 
series of hills as lightly 
as a ship the waves, she makes real 
exercise of any walking within her 
limits. Moreover the streets are tied 
so intimately and inextricably to sea- 
shore and country that San Francisco's 
life is, in one sense, less like city life 
than that of any other tity in the United 
States. Yet by the curious paradox of 
her climate, which compels much in- 
door night entertainment, reinforced 
by that cosmopolitanism of atmosphere, 
life there is city life raised to the highest 
limit. Last of all, its size — and per- 
sonally I think there should be a federal 
law forbidding cities to grow any bigger 
than San Francisco — makes it an en- 
gaging combination of provincialism 
and cosmopolitanism. 



24 TEE NATIVE SON 

Not scenery this The '*city" does its 
time, Reader, nor cli- i ^ ^ ^ ^v n 
mate, but weather, best tO put the ban 
Like scenery and Franciscanin goodcon- 
dimate it must be ^j^j^j^^ Andtheweath- 
done. Hurdle this . i • rr 

paragraph. Eastern- er reinforces this effort 

ers! Keep on read- by keeping him OUt of 
ing, Californiacs ! •, -rt r 

doors. Because oi a 

happy collaboration of land with sea, 
the region about San Francisco, the 
''bay" region — individual in this as in 
everything else — has a climate of its 
own. It is, notwithstanding its brief 
rainy season, a singularly pleasant cli- 
mate. It cannot be described as '* tem- 
perate" in the sense, for instance, that 
New England's climate is temperate. 
That is too harsh. Neither can it be 
described as ** semi-tropical" in the way 
that Hawaii, for example, is semi- 
tropical. That is too soft. It combines 
the advantages of both with the disa- 
bilities of neither. 

That sparkling briskness — the tang 
— which is the best the temperate cli- 



TEE NATIVE SON 25 

mate has to offer, gives .. . ^. ^ 

.' &. You may begin to 

the JN ative bon his high- read again, Eastem- 

powered strenuosity . ^^^ ' *'«^ ^* ^^^^ ^ ''^^ 

rr^i , T , . r returned to the Na- 

That developing soft- tiveSon 
n ess — lush — (every 
Native Son will admit the lush) — 
which is the best the semi-tropical ele- 
ment has to contribute, gives him his 
size and comeliness. The weather of 
San Francisco keeps the Native Son 
out of doors whenever it is possible 
through the day time. To take care 
of this flight into the open are seashore 
and mountain, city parks and country 
roads. That same weather drives him 
indoors during the evenings. And to 
meet this demand are hotels, restaur- 
ants, theatres, moving-picture houses, 
in numbers out of all proportion to the 
population. Again, the weather per- 
mits him to play baseball and football 
for unusual periods with ease, to play 
tennis and golf three-quarters of the 
year with comfort, to walk and swim 



26 THE NATIVE SON 

all the year with joy. Notwithstanding 
the combination of heavy rains with 
startling hill heights, he never ceases to 
motor day or night, winter or summer. 
The weather not only allows this, but 
the climate drives him to it. 

These are the reasons why there is 
nothing hectic about the hordes of 
Native Sons who nightly motor about 
San Francisco, who fill its theatres and 
restaurants. An after-theatre group in 
San Francisco is as different from the 
tallowy, gas-bred, after-theatre groups 
on Broadway as it is possible to imagine. 
In San Francisco, many of them look 
as though they had just come from 
State-long motor trips; from camping 
expeditions on the beach, among the 
redwoods, or in the desert; from long, 
cold Arctic cruises, or long, hot Pacific 
ones. Moreover the Native Son's club 
encourages all this athletic instinct by 
offering spacious and beautiful gym- 
nasium quarters in which to develop 



THE NATIVE SON 27 

it. Lacking a club, he can turn to the 
pubHc baths, surely the biggest and 
most beautiful in the world. 

Just as there is a different physical 
aspect to the Native Son, there is, com- 
pared to the rest of the country, a dif- 
ferent social aspect to him. California 
is still young, still pioneer in outlook. 
Society has not yet shaken down into 
those tightly stratified layers, typical of 
the East. There is a real spirit of de- 
mocracy in the air. 

The first time I visited San Francisco 
I was impressed with the remarks of a 
Native Son of moderate salary who had 
travelled much in the East. 

**This here and now San Francisco 
is a real man's town*', he said. *'I 
don't know so much about the women, 
but the men certainly can have a better 
time here than in any other city in the 
country. And then again, a poor 
man can live in a way and do things 
in a style that would be impossible in 



28 THE NATIVE SON 

New York. At my club I meet all 
kinds of men. Many of them are 
prominent citizens and many of them 
have large fortunes. I mix with them 
all. I don't mean to say I run con- 
stantly with the prom. cits, and the 
millionaires. I don't. I can't afford 
that. But they occasionally entertain 
me. And I as often entertain them. 
So many restaurants here are both in- 
expensive and good that I can return 
their hospitality self-respectingly and 
without undue expense. In New York 
I would not only never meet that type 
of man, but I could not afford to enter- 
tain him if I did." 

Allied to this, perhaps, is a quality, 
typical of San Francisco, which I can 
describe only as promiscuity. That 
promiscuity is in its best pnase a frank- 
ness; a fearlessness; a gorgeous candor 
which made possible the epigram that 
San Francisco has every vice but hypo- 
crisy. Civically, two cross currents cut 



THE NATIVE SON 29 

through the city's Ufe; one of a high- 
visioned enlightenment which astounds 
the visiting stranger by its force, its 
white-fire enthusiasm ; the other a black 
sordidness and soddenness which dis- 
plays but one redeeming quality — the 
characteristic San Franciscan candor. 
That openness is physical as well as 
spiritual. The city, dropped over its 
many hills like a great loose cobweb 
weighted thickly with the pearl cubes 
of buildings, with its wide streets; its 
frequent parks; its broad-spaced resi- 
dential areas; its gardened houses in 
which high windows crystallize every 
view and sun parlors or sleeping porches 
catch both the first and last hint of 
daylight— the city itself has the effect 
of living in the open. Everybody is 
frankly interested in everybody else and 
in what is going on. Of all the cities 
in the country, San Francisco is by 
weather and temperament, most adapt- 
ed to the pleasant French habit of open- 



30 THE NATIVE SON 

air eating. The clients in the barber 
shops, lathered like clowns and trussed 
up in what is perhaps the least heroic 
posture and costume possible for man, 
are seated at the windows, where they 
may enjoy the outside procession dur- 
ing the boresome processes of the shave 
and the hair-cut. In the windows of 
the downtown shops, with no pretence 
whatever of the curtains customary in 
the East, men clerks disrobe and re-robe 
life-sized female models of an appalling 
nude flesh-likeness. They dress these 
helpless ladies in all the fripperies of 
femininity from the wax out, oblivious 
to the flippant comments of gathering 
crowds. It's all a part of that civic 
candor somehow. Nowhere I think 
are eyes so clear, glances so direct and 
expressions so frank as in California. 
Nowhere is conversation and discussion 
more straightforward and courageous. 
All that I have written thus far is 
only by way of preliminary to showing 



TEE NATIVE SON 31 

you what the background of the Native 
Son has been and to explaining why 
Europe does not dazzle him much and 
the East not at all. Remember that 
he is instinctively an athlete and that 
he has never dissipated his magnificent 
strength in fighting weather. If he is 
a little — mind you, I say only a /itt/e — 
inclined to use that strength on more 
entertaining dissipation, he is as likely 
to restore the balance by much physical 
exercise. 

Remember that all There i go again! 

^ ' IT ^ 1 1 Enormous ! Superb ! 

his life he has gazed on splendid! Spacious! 

beauty — beauty tragic You see how impos- 
and haunting, beauty '^^' '' '' *^ !^""p 

°' -^ your vocabulary 

gorgeous and gay. Re- down when Caiifor- 
member he is accus- nia is your subject. 

, 1 Another moment 

t.Omed to enormous and I shall be saying 
sizes; superb heights; more unique. 

splendid distances ; spa- 
cious vistas. That California does not 
produce an annual crop of megalo- 
maniacs is the best argument I know 



32 THE NATIVE SON 

for the superiority of heredity over en- 
vironment. 

Remember, too, that all his life the 
Native Son has soaked in an art atmos- 
phere potentially as strong and individ- 
ual as ancient Greece or renaisance Italy. 
The dazzling country side, the sulphitic 
brew of races, the cosmopolitan *'city'* 
have taken care of that. That art-spirit 
accounts for such minor California 
phenomena as photography raised to 
unequalled art levels and shops whose 
simple beautiful interiors resemble the 
private galleries of art collectors; it ac- 
counts for such major phenomena as the 
Stevenson monument, the * ' Lark * ' , the 
annual Grove Play of the Bohemian 
Club, and the Exposition of 1915. 

The tiny monument to Stevenson, 
tucked away in a corner soaked with ro- 
mantic memories — Portsmouth Square 
— compares favorably with the charm- 
ing memorials to the French dead. It 
is a thing of beautiful proportions. A 



THE NATIVE SON 33 

little stone column supports a bronze 
ship, its sails bellying robustly to the 
whip of the Pacific winds. The inscrip- 
tion — a well known quotation from 
the author — is topped simply by '*To 
remember Robert Louis Stevenson." 

The **Lark'' is perhaps the most 
delicious bit of literary fooling that this 
country has ever produced. It raised its 
blythe song at the Golden Gate, but it 
was heard across a whole continent. For 
two years, Gelett Bur- 
gess, Bruce Porter, For- p^^^^^ps y^" ^'^ 

r> TT7-11' !-» 11 object that some of 

ter Garnett, Willis Folk, t^ese are not Native 

Ernest PeixOttO, and Sons. But hush! 
Florence Lundborg Califomians consid- 

=» er anybody who has 

performed in it all the stayed five minutes 
artistic antics that their »" ^^^ state-a real 

1 1 . . . ,. Californian. And 

youth, their originality, Relieve us, Reader, 

their high spirits SUg- by that time most 

gested. Professor Nor- °^ *^^"^, ^^]' ^" 

=* come not Cahforni- 

ton. Speaking to a class ans but Californiacs. 

at Harvard University, 

said that the two literary events of the 



34 THE NATIVE SON 

decade between 1890 and 1900 were 
the fiction of the young KipUng and 
the verse that appeared in the " Lark." 
The Grove-Play is an annual incident 
of which I fancy only California could 
be capable. Of course the calculable 
quality of the weather helps in this 
possibility. But the art-spirit, born and 
bred in the Californian, is the driv- 
ing force. Every year the Bohemian 
Club produces in its summer annex — 
a beautiful grove of redwoods beside 
the Russian river — a play in praise of 
the forest. The stage is a natural one, 
a cleared hill slope with redwoods for 
wings. The play is written, staged, 
produced and acted by members of the 
club. The incidental music is also 
written by them. Scarcely has one 
year's play been produced before the 
rehearsals for the next begin. The 
result is a performance of a finished 
beauty which not only astounds East- 
erners, but surprises Europeans. A]- 



TEE NATIVE SON 35 

though undoubtedly it is the best, it is 
only one of numberless out-of-door 
masques, plays and pageants produced 
all over California. 

As for the Exposition of 1915, when 
I say that for many Californians, it will 
take the edge off some of the beauty of 
Europe, I am quite serious. For it was 
colored in the gorgeous gamut of the 
Orient, clamant yellows, oranges, golds, 
combined with mysterious blues, muted 
scarlets. And it was illuminated as no 
Exposition has ever before been illum- 
inated; with lights that dripped down 
from the cornices of the buildings; or 
shot up from their foundations; or 
gleamed through transparent pillars; 
or glistened behind tumbling waters; 
or sparkled within leaping fountains. 
Some of this light even floated from 
enormous braziers, thereby filling the 
night with clouds of mist-flame; or 
flooded across the bay from reservoirs 
of tinted glass, thereby sluicing the 



36 THE NATIVE SON 

whole dream-world with fluid color. 
All this was reflected in still lakes and 
quiet pools. The procession of one 
year's seasons gradually subdued its gor- 
geousness to an effect of antiquity, toned 
but still colorful. The quick-growing 
California vines covered it with an age- 
old luxuriance of green. As for the 
architecture — I repeat that the Calif or- 
nian, seeing for the first time the square 
of St. Peter's in Rome and of St. Mark's 
in Venice, is likely to suffer a transitory 
but definite sense of disappointment. 
For the big central court of the Expo- 
sition held suggestions of both these 
squares. It seemed quite as old and 
permanent. And it was much more 
striking in situation, with the bay offer- 
ing an immense, flat blue extension at 
one side and the city hills, pricked with 
lights, slanting up and away from the 
other. By day, the joyous, whimsical 
fantasy of the colossal Tower of Jewels, 
which caught the light in millions of 



THE NATIVE SON 37 

rainbow sparkles, must, for children at 
least, have made of its entrance the 
door to fairyland. At night, there was 
the tragedy of old history about those 
faintly fiery facades . . . those enor- 
mous shadow-haunted hulks . . . 

Remember, last of all, as naturally 
as from infancy the Native Son has 
breathed the tonic and toxic air of 
California, he has breathed the spirit 
of democracy. That spirit of demo- 
cracy is so strong, indeed, that the 
enfranchised women of California give 
intelligent guidance to the feminists 
of a whole nation ; public opinion is so 
enlightened that it sets a pace for the 
rest of the country and labor is so pro- 
gressive that it is a revelation to the 
visiting sociologist. 

Indeed, nowhere in the whole world, 
I fancy, is labor so healthy, so happy, 
so prosperous. California brings to the 
workers' problems the free enlightened 
attitude characteristic of her. As be- 



38 THE NATIVE SON 

tween on the one hand hordes of unem- 
ployed; huge slums; poverty spots; and 
on the other a well-paid laboring class 
with fair hours, she chooses the latter, 
thereby storing up for herself eugenic 
capital. 

I have always wished that California 
would strike off a series of medals sym- 
bolic of some of the Utopian conditions 
which prevail there. I would like to 
suggest a model for one. I was walking 
once in the vicinity of the Ferry with 
a woman who knows the labor move- 
ment of California as well as an out- 
sider may. Suddenly she whispered in 
my ear, **Oh look! Isn't he a typical 
California labor man?'* 

It was his noon hour and, in his shirt 
sleeves, he was leaning against the wall, 
a pipe in his mouth. He was tall and 
lean; not an ounce of superfluous flesh 
on his splendid frame, but a great deal 
of muscle that lay in long, faintly swell- 
ing contours against it. He was black- 



THE NATIVE SON 39 

haired and black-mustached ; both hair 
and mustache were Hghtly touched 
with grey. His thick-lashed blue eyes 
sparkled as clear and happy as a child's. 
In their expression and, indeed, in the 
whole relaxed attitude of his fine, long 
figure, was an entertained, contented 
interest, an amused tolerance of the 
passing crowd. You will see this type, 
among others equally fine, again and 
again, in the unions of California. 

Yes, that spirit of democracy is not 
only strong but militant. 

Militant! I never could make up 
my mind which made the fightingest 
reading in the San Francisco papers, 
the account of Friday's boxing contest 
or of Monday's meeting of the Board 
of Supervisors. They ^/o say that a visit- 
ing Easterner was taken to the Board 
of Supervisors one afternoon. In the 
evening he was regaled with a battle 
royal. And, and — t/iey do say — he fell 
asleep at the battle royal because it 



40 TEE NATIVE SON 

seemed so tame in comparison with the 
Board of Supervisors. 

The athletic instinct in the Native 
Son accounts for the star athletes, box- 
ers, tennis players, ball players; that art 
instinct for the painters, illustrators, 
sculptors, playwrights, fiction writers, 
poets, actors, photographers, producers ; 
that spirit of democracy for the labor 
leaders and politicians with whom Cali- 
fornia has inundated the rest of the 
country. 

I started to make a list of the famous 
Californians in all these classes. But, 
when I had filled one sheet with names, 
realizing that no matter how hard I 
cudgelled my memory, I would inevi- 
tably forget somebody of importance, 
I tore it up. Take a copy of '* Who's 
Who'' and cut out the lives of all those 
who don't come from California and 
see what a respectable-sized volume you 
have left. 

If any woman tourist should ask me 



THE NATIVE SON 41 

what was the greatest menace to the 
peace of mind of a woman travelling 
alone in California, I should answer in- 
stantly — the Native Son. I wish I could 
draw a picture of him. Perhaps he's 
too good looking. Myself, I think 
the enfranchised women of California 
should bring in junctions — or whatever 
is the proper legal weapon — against so 
dangerous a degree of male pulchritude. 
Of course the Native Son could reply 
that, in this respect, he has nothing on 
the Native Daughter, she being with- 
out doubt the most beautiful woman in 
the world. To, this, however, she 
could retort that f/iat is as it should be, 
but it's no fair for mere men to be 
stealing her stuff. 

That agglomeration of the Anglo- 
Saxon, the Celt and the Latin, has en- 
dowed the Native Son with the pul- 
chritude of all three races. In eugenic 
combination with Ireland, California 
is peculiarly happy. The climate has 



42 THE NATIVE SON 

made him tall and big. His athletic 
habits has made him shapely and strong. 
Both have given him clear eyes, a 
Smooth skin, swift grace of motion. 
Those clear e3^es invest 
This is misleading ! him with alook of inno- 
cence and unsophisti ca- 
tion. He is as rich in dimples as though 
they had been shaken onto him from a 
salt-cellar. One in each cheek, one in his 
chin — count them — three! The Na- 
tive Daughter would have a license to 
complain of this if she herself didn*t 
look as thou she'd been sprinkled with 
dimples from a pepper-caster. In ad- 
dition — oh, but what's the use? Who 
ever managed to paint the lily with 
complimentary words or gild refined 
gold with fancy phrases? The region 
bounded by Post, Bush, Mason and 
Taylor Streets contains San Francisco's 
most famous clubs. Any Congress of 
Eugenists wishing to establish a stand- 
ard of male beauty for the human race 



THE NATIVE SON 43 

has only to place a moving-picture ma- 
chine at the entrance of any one of 
these — let us say the Athletic Club. 
The results will at the same time en- 
rapture and discourage a dazzled world. 
I will prophesy that some time those 
same enfranchised women of California 
are going to realize the danger of such 
a sight bursting unexpectedly on the 
unprepared woman tenderfoot. Then 
they'll rope off that dangerous area, 
establish guards at the corners and put 
up ''Stop! Look! Listen!'' signs 
where they'll do the most good. And 
as proof of all these statements, I refer 
you to that array of young gods, filing 
endlessly over the sporting pages of the 
California newspapers. 

A Native Son told me once that he 
had been given the star-assignment of 
newspaper history. Somebody offered 
a prize to the most beautiful daughter 
of California. And his job was to travel 
all over the State to inspect the candi- 



44 THE NATIVE SON 

dates. He said it was a shame to take 
his pay and I agreed that it was sheer 
burglary. All Fve got to say is that if 
anybody wants to offer a prize for the 
handsomest Native Son in California, 
ril give my services as 

And I'll pay for -^j j ^.ji ^jj ^j^^^ 

the privilege. What -^ =* 

the Chamber of after nearly two years 
Commerce ought to of war-time Europe, in 

do, though, is to i • i t i i i 

advertise that this which I have had an 
concession will be opportunity to Study 

put up at auction. ^^^^ ^f ^j^^ ^^^^. j^j^. 
Indeed, if this sale 

were made an an- tary material of Eng- 
nuai event, women land, France, Italy, 

bidders would flock -r* in* ^ 

to California from Portugal, Spam and 
all over the world. Switzerland — the Na- 
tive Son leads them all. 
I am inclined to think he is the best 
physical specimen in the world. 

But there is a great deal more to the 
Native Son than mere comeliness. That 
long list of nationally-famous Califor- 
nians proves this in one way, the high 
average of his citizenship in another. 



TEE NATIVE SON 45 

Physically he is a big, strong, high- 
geared, high-powered racing machine ; 
and he has an inexhaustible supply of 
energy for motive fluid and an extra- 
ordinary degree of initiative and enter- 
prise for driving forces. That initiative 
and enterprise spring part from his in- 
alienable pep, his vivid interest in life; 
and part from that constructive loose- 
ness of the social structure, which gives 
them both full play. If the Native Son 
sees anything he wants to do, he in- 
stantly does it. If he sees anything that 
he wants to get, he promptly takes it. 
If he sees anything that he wants to be, 
he immediately is it. He saunters into 
New York in a degage way and takes 
the whole city by storm. He strolls 
through Europe with an insouciant air 
and finds it almost as good as California. 
All this, supplemented by his abiding 
conviction that California must have 
the most and best and biggest of every- 
thing, accounts for what California has 



46 THE NATIVE SON 

done in the sixty-odd years of her 
existence, accounts for what San Fran- 
cisco has done in the decade since her 
great disaster, accounts for that war- 
time Exposition; perhaps the most 
elaborate, certainly the most beautiful 
the world has ever seen. 

The Native Son has a strong sense 
of humor and he invents his own slang. 
He expresses himself with the pictures- 
queness of diction inevitable to the 
West and with much of its sly, dry 
humor. But there is a joyous quality 
to the San Francisco blague which sets 
it apart, even in the West. You find 
its counterpart only in Paris. Perhaps 
it is that, being reenforced by wit, it 
explodes more quickly than the humor 
of the rest of the country. The Cali- 
fornian with his bulk, his beauty, his 
boast and his blague descending on New 
York is very like the native of the Midi 
who with similar qualities, is always 
taking Paris by storm. Marseilles, the 



TEE NATIVE SON 47 

chief metropolis of the Midi, has a 
famous promenade — less than half a 
dozen blocks, packed tight with the 
peoples and colors and odors of two 
continents — called the CannebPere, The 
Marseillais, returning from his first 
visit to Paris, remarks with condescend- 
ing scorn that Paris has no Cannebiere, 
Of course Paris has her network of 
Grand Boulevards but — So the Cali- 
forniac patronizingly discovers that 
New York has no Market Street, no 
Golden Gate Park, no Twin Peaks, no 
Mt. Tamalpais, no seals. Above all — 
and this is the final thrust — New York 
hjlat. 

Some day medical journals will give 
the same space to the victims of Cali- 
fornia hospitality that they now allot to 
victims of Oriental famines. For with 
Californians, hospitality is first an in- 
stinct, then an art, then a religion and 
finally a mania. It is utterly impossible 
to resist it, but it takes a strong consti- 



48 THE NATIVE SON 

tution to survive. Calif ornians will go 
a uA u^ to any length or trouble 

Somebody ought -^ ^ 

to invent a serum in this matter ; their 
that renders the Vic- hospitality is all mixed 

tim immune. ..,■,. 

up With their art in- 
stinct and their sense of humor. For 
no matter what graceful tribute they 
pay to famous visiting aliens, its for- 
mality is always leavened by their deli- 
cious wit. And no matter how much 
fun they poke at departing or returning 
friends, it is always accompanied by 
some social tribute of great charm and 
originality. 

A loyal Adopted Son of California, a 
novelist and muckraker, returned a few 
years ago to the beloved land of his 
adoption. His arrival was made the 
occasion of a dinner by his Club. He 
had come back specifically on a muck- 
raking tour. But it happened that dur- 
ing his absence he had written a series 
of fiction stories, all revolving about the 
figure of a middle-aged woman me- 



THE NATIVE SON 49 

dium. In the midst of the dinner, a 
fellow clubman disguised as a middle- 
aged woman medium began to read 
the future of the guests. She discoursed 
long and accurately on the personal 
New York affairs of the returned muck- 
raker. To get such information, the 
wires between the committee who got 
up the dinner and his friends in New 
York must have been kept hot for 
hours. Moreover, just after midnight, 
a newsboy arrived with editions of a 
morning paper of which the whole first 
page was devoted to him. There were 
many, highly-colored accounts of all- 
night revelries; expense accounts, of 
which every second item was cham- 
pagne and every fifth bromo-selzer, 
etc., etc. 

Of course but a limited number of 
papers with this extraneous sheet were 
printed and those distributed only at 
the dinner. One, however, was sent 
to the Eastern magazine which had 



50 TEE NATIVE SON 

dispatched our muckraking hero to the 
Golden Gate. They repUed instantly 
and heatedly by wire to go on with his 
work, that in spite of the outrageous 
slander of the opposition, they abso- 
lutely trusted him. 

This was only one of an endless suc- 
cession of dinners which dot the social 
year with their originality. 

During the course of the Exposition, 
the governing officials presented so 
many engraved placques to California 
citizens and to visiting notabilities that 
after a while, the Californians began to 
josh the system. A certain San Fran- 
ciscan is famous for much generous 
and unobtrusive philanthropy. Also 
his self-evolved translation of the duties 
of friendship is the last word on that 
subject. He was visited unexpectedly 
at his office one day by a group of 
friends. With much ceremony, they 
presented him with a placque — an 
amusing plaster burlesque of the real 



\ 



THE NATIVE SON 51 

article. He had the CaHfornian sense 
of humor and he thoroughly enjoyed 
the situation. Admitting that the joke 
was on him, he celebrated according 
to time-honored rites. After his friends 
had left, he found on his desk a small 
uninscribed package which had appar- 
ently been left by accident. He opened 
it. Inside was a beautiful leather box 
showing his initials in gold. And with- 
in the box was a small bronze placque 
exquisitely engraved by a master-artist 
. . . bearing a message of appreciation 
exquisitely phrased . . . the names of 
all his friends. I know of no incident 
more typical of the taste and the humor 
with which the Native Son performs 
every social function. That sense of 
humor does not lessen but it lightens 
the gallantry and chivalry which is the 
earmark of Westerners. It makes for 
that natural perfection of manners 
which is also typical of the Native 
Son. 



52 THE NATIVE SON 

Touching the matter of their man- 
ners ... A woman writer I know 
very well once went to a boxing-match 
in San Francisco. Women are for- 
bidden to attend such events, so that a 
special permission had to be obtained 
for her. She was warned beforehand 
that the audience might manifest its 
disapproval in terms both audible and 
uncomplimentary. She entered the 
arena in considerable trepidation of 
spirit. It was an important match — 
for the lightweight championship of 
the world. She occupied a ring-side 
box where, it is likely, everybody saw 
her. There were ten thousand men 
in the arena and she was the only wo- 
man. But in all the two hours she sat 
there, she was not once made conscious, 
by a word or glance in her direction, 
that anybody had noticed her presence. 
That I think is a perfect example of 
perfect mob-manners. 

Perhaps that instinct, not only for 



THE NATIVE SON 53 

fair but for chivalrous play, which also 
characterizes the Native Son, comes 
from pioneer days. Certainly it is 
deepened by a very active interest in 
all kinds of sports. I draw my two 
examples of this from the boxing 
world. This is a story that Sam Ber- 
ger tells about Andrew Gallagher. 

It happened in that period when 
both men were amateur lightweights 
and Mr. Gallagher was champion of 
the Pacific Coast. Mr. Berger chal- 
lenged Mr. Gallagher and defeated 
him. The margin of victory was so 
narrow, however, that Mr. Gallagher 
felt justified in asking for another 
match, and got it. 

This time Mr. Berger' s victory was 
complete. In a letter, Mr. Berger said, 
"'A woman cannot possibly understand 
what being a champion means to a 
man. It isn't so much the champion- 
ship itself but it 's the slap on the shoul- 
der and the whispered comment as you 



54 TEE NATIVE SON 

pass, 'There goes our champion!' that 
counts. Looking back at it from the 
thirties, it isn't so important; but in 
the twenties it means a lot. My dress- 
ing room was near Gallagher's, so that, 
although he didn't know this, I could 
not help overhearing much that was 
said there. After we got back to our 
rooms, I heard some friend of Galla- 
gher's refer to me as 'a damn Jew'. 
What was my delight at Gallagher's 
magnanimity to hear him answer, 
'Why do you call him a damn Jew? 
He is a very fine fellow and a better 
boxer than me, the best day I ever 
saw.'" 

That incident seems to me typical of 
the Native Son ; and the long unbroken 
friendship that grew out of it, equally 
so. 

A few years ago an interview with 
Willie Ritchie appeared in a New York 
paper. He had just boxed Johnny 
Dundee, defeating him. In passing I 



THE NATIVE SON 55 

may state that Mr. Ritchie was, dur- 
ing that winter, taking an agricultural 
course at Columbia College, and that 
this is quite typical of the kind of pro- 
fessional athlete California turns out. 
You would have expected that in a long 
two-column interview, Mr. Ritchie 
would have devoted much of the space 
to himself, his record, his future plans. 
Not at all. It was all about Johnnie 
Dundee, for whom personally he seems 
to have an affectionate friendship and 
for whose work a rueful and decidedly 
humorous appreciation. He analyzed 
with great sapience the psychological 
effect on the audience of Mr. Dundee's 
ring-system of perpetual motion. He 
described with great delight a punch 
that Mr. Dundee had landed on the 
very top of his head. In fact Mr. Dun- 
dee's publicity manager could do no 
better than to use parts of this interview 
for advertising purposes. 

I began that last paragraph with the 



56 THE NATIVE SON 

phrase, *' A few years ago'\ But since 
that time a whole era seems to have 
passed — that heart-breaking era of the 
Great War. And now the Native Son 
has entered into and emerged from a 
new and terrible game. He has needed 
— and I doubt not displayed — all that 
he has of strength, natural and devel- 
oped; of keenness and coolness ; of 
bravery and fortitude; of capacity to 
endure and yet josh on. 

Perhaps after all, though, the best 
example of the Native Son's fairness 
was his enfranchisement of the Native 
Daughter and the way in which he did 
it. Sometime, when the stories of all 
the suffrage fights are told, we shall get 
the personal experiences of the women 
who worked in that whirlwind cam- 
paign. It will make interesting read- 
ing; for it is both dramatic and pictur- 
esque. And it will redound forever 
and ever and ever to the glory of the 
Native Son. 



THE NATIVE SON 57 

The Native Son — in the truest sense 
of the romantic — is a romantic figure. 
He could scarcely avoid being that, for 
he comes from the most romantic State 
in the Union and, if from San Fran- 
cisco, the most romantic city in our 
modern world. It is, I believe, mainly 
his sense of romance that drives him 
into the organization which he himself 
has called the Native Sons of the Gold- 
en West; an adventurous instinct that 
has come down to us from mediaeval 
times, urging men to form into con- 
genial company for offence and defence, 
and to offer personality the opportunity 
for picturesque masquerade. 

That romantic background not only 
explains the Native Son but the long 
line of extraordinary fiction, with Cali- 
fornia for a background, which Cali- 
fornia has produced. California though 
is the despair of fiction writers. It offers 
so many epochs; such a mixture of 
nationalities; so many and such viol- 



58 THE NATIVE SON 

ently contrasted atmospheres, that it is 
difficult to make it credible. The gold 
rush . . . the pioneers . . . the Vigi- 
lantes . . . the Sand Lot days . . . 
San Francisco before the fire . . . the 
period of reconstruction. As for the 
drama lying submerged everywhere in 
the labor movement . . . the novelists 
have not even begun to mine below 
the surface. To the fiction-writer, the 
real, everyday life is so dramatic that 
the temptation is to substitute for inven- 
tion the literal records of some literary 
moving-picture machine. 

The San Franciscans will inundate 
you with stories of that old San Fran- 
cisco. And what stories they are ! The 
water-front, Chinatown, the Barbary 
Coast and particularly that picturesque 
neighborhood, south of Market Street 
— here were four of the great drama- 
breeding areas of the world. The 
San Franciscans of the past gener- 
ation will tell you that the new San 



TEE NATIVE SON 59 

Francisco is tamed and ordered. That 
may be all true. But to one at least 
who never saw the old city, romance 
shows her bewildering: ^ , ^ u.^ .• 

. =* In fact, all the time 

face everywhere in the you stay in Caiifor- 
new one. Almost any- "^^ yo^'^e living in 
thing can happen there ^ * ^^' 
and almost everything does. Life ex- 
plodes. It's as though there were a 
romantic dynamite in solution in the 
air. You make a step in any direction 
and — bang! — you bump into adven- 
ture. There is something about the 
sparkle and bustle and gaiety of the 
streets . . . There is something about 
the friendliness and the vivacity of the 
people . . . There is something about 
the intimacy and color and gaiety of 
the restaurants. . . . 

Let me tell some stories to prove my 
point. Anybody who has lived in San 
Francisco has heard them by scores. 
I pick one or two at random. 

A group of Native Sons were once 



60 THE NATIVE SON 

dining in one of the little Bohemian 
restaurants of San Francisco. Two of 
them made a bet with the others that 
they could kiss every woman in the 
room. They went from table to table 
and in mellifluous accents, plus a strain 
of hyperbole, explained their predica- 
ment to each lady, concluding with a 
respectful demand for a kiss. Every 
woman in the room (with the gallant 
indulgence of her swain) acceded to 
this amazing request. In fifteen min- 
utes all the kisses were collected and 
the wager won. I don't know on 
which this story reflects the greater 
credit — the Native Daughter or the 
Native Son. But I do know that it 
couldn't have happened anywhere but 
in California. 

The first time I visited San Francisco 
shortly after the fire, I was walking one 
day in rather a lonely part of the city. 
There were many burnt areas about: 
only a few pedestrians. Presently, I 



THE NATIVE SON 61 

saw a man and woman leaning against 
a fence, absorbed in conversation. 
Apparently they did not hear my ap- 
proach; they were too deep in talk. 
They did not look out of the ordinary 
and, indeed, I should not have given 
them a second glance if, as I passed, I 
had not heard the woman say, *'And 
did you kill anyone else?'* 

A man told me that once early in the 
morning he was walking through 
Chinatown. There was nobody else 
on the street except, a little distance 
ahead, a child carrying a small bundle. 
Suddenly just as she passed, a panel in 
one of the houses slid open ... a 
hand came out . . . the child slipped 
the bundle into the hand . . . the 
hand disappeared . . . the wall panel 
closed up. The child trotted on as 
though nothing had happened . . . 
disappeared around the corner. When 
my friend reached the house, it was 
impossible to locate the panel. 



62 THE NATIVE SON 

A reporter I know was leaving his 
home one morning when there came 
a ring at his telephone* '* There is 
something wrong in apartment number 
blank, house number blank, on your 
street, ' ' said Central. * ' Will you please 
go over there at once?*' He went. 
Somehow he got into the house. No- 
body answered his ring at the apart- 
ment; he had to break the door open. 
Inside a very beautiful girl in a gay 
negligee was lying dead on a couch, a 
bottle of poison on the floor beside her. 
He investigated the case. The dead 
girl had been in the habit of calling a 
certain number, and she always used a 
curious identifying code-phrase. The 
reporter investigated that number. The 
rest of the story is long and thrilling, 
but finally he ran down a group of law- 
breakers who had been selling the dead 
girl drugs, were indirectly responsible 
for her suicide. Do you suppose such 
a ripe story could have dropped straight 



THE NATIVE SON 63 

from the Tree of Life into the hand of 
a reporter anywhere except in Cali- 
fornia ? 

A woman I know was once waiting 
on the corner for a car. Near, she 
happened casually to notice, was a 
Chinaman of a noticeable, dried anti- 
quity, shuffling along under the weight 
of a bunch of bananas. She was at that 
moment considering a curious mental 
problem and, in her preoccupation, she 
drew her hand down the length of her 
face in a gesture that her friends recog- 
nize as characteristic. Did she, by 
accident, stumble on one of the secret 
signals of a great secret traffic? That 
is her only explanation of what fol- 
lowed. For suddenly the old China- 
man shuffled to her side, unobtrusively 
turned his back towards her. One of 
the bananas on top the bunch, easy to 
the reach of her hand, was opened, 
displaying itself to be emptied of fruit. 
But in its place was something — some- 



64 TEE NATIVE SON 

thing little, wrapped in tissue paper. 
Her complete astonishment apparently 
warned the vendor of drugs of his mis- 
take. He scuttled across the street; in 
a flash had vanished in a back alley. 

One could go on forever. I cannot 
forbear another. A woman was pass- 
ing through the theatrical district of 
San Francisco one night, just before 
the theatres let out. The street was 
fairly deserted. Suddenly she was ac- 
costed by a strange gentleman of suave 
address. Obviously he had dallied with 
the demon and was spectacularly the 
worse for it. He was carrying an enor- 
mous, a very beautiful — and a very 
expensive — bouquet. In a short speech 
of an impassioned eloquence and quite 
as flowery as his tribute, he presented 
her with the bouquet. She tried to 
avoid accepting it. But this was not, 
without undue publicity, to be done. 
Finally to put an end to the scene, she 
bore off her booty. She has often won- 



TEE NATIVE SON 65 

dered what actress was deprived of her 
over-the-foot-lights trophy by the sud- 
den freak of an exhilarated messenger. 

I know that the Native Son works 
and works hard. The proof of that is 
CaUfornia itself. San Francisco twice 
rebuilt, the progressive city of Los 
Angeles, all the merry enterprising 
smaller California cities and towns. 
But, somehow, he plays so hard at his 
work and works so hard at his play 
that you are always wondering whether 
it*s all the time he works or all the 
time he plays. At any rate, out of his 
work comes gaiety and out of his play 
seriousness. His activities are so many 
that when I try to make my imagined 
program of his average day, I should 
provide one not of twenty-four hours, 
but of seventy-two. 

I imagine him going down to his 
office at about nine in the morning, 
working until noon as though driven 
by steam and electricity; then lunching 



66 THE NATIVE SON 

with a party of Native Sons, all filled 
with jocund japeful joshing Native 
Son humor which brims over in show- 
ers of Native Son wit. I imagine him 
returning to an afternoon of brief but 
concentrated strenuous labor, then 
going for a run in the Park, or tennis, 
or golf, ending with a swim; present- 
ing himself fine and fit at his club at 
first-cocktail time. I imagine him din- 
ing at his club or at a restaurant or at 
a stag-dinner, always in the company 
of other joyous Native Sons; going to 
the Orpheum, motoring through the 
Park afterwards; and finally indulging 
in another bite before he gets to bed. 
Sometime during the process, he has 
assisted in playing a graceful practical 
joke on a trusting friend. He has at- 
tended a meeting to boost a big, new 
developing project for California. He 
has made a speech. He has contributed 
to some pressing charity. He has 
swung into at least two political fights. 



THE NATIVE SON 67 

He has attended a pageant or a fiesta 
or a carnival. And he has managed to 
conduct his wooing of that beautiful 
(and fortunate) Native Daughter who 
will some day become Mrs. Native 
Son. 

Every hour in San 

T^ . . , Really my favorite 

Francisco is a charm- ^our is every hour. 

ing hour. Perhaps my 
favorite comes anywhere between six 
and eight. Then ''The City" is bril- 
liant with lights; street lamps, shop 
windows, roof advertising signs. The 
hotels are a-dance and a-dazzle with 
life. Flowers and greens make mats 
and cushions of gorgeous color at the 
downtown corners. At one end of 
Market Street, the Ferry building is 
outlined in electricity, sometimes in 
color; at the other end the delicate 
outlines of Twin Peaks are merging 
with night. Perhaps swinging towards 
the horizon there is a crescent moon — 
that gay strong young bow which 



68 THE NATIVE SON 

should be the emblem of California's 
perpetual youth and of her augmenting 
power. Perhaps close to the crescent 
flickers the evening star — that jewel 
on the brow of night which should be 
a symbol of San Francisco's eternal 
sparkle. And, perhaps floating over 
the City, a sheer high fog mutes the 
crescent's gold to a daffodil yellow; 
winds moist gauzes over the thrilling 
evening star. At the top of the high 
hill-streets, the lamps run in straight 
strings or pendant necklaces. Down 
their astonishing slopes slide cars like 
glass boxes filled with liquid light; 
motors whose front lamps flood the 
asphalt with bubbling gold. If it be 
Christmas — and nowhere is Christmas 
so Christmasy as in California — the 
clubs and hotels show facades covered 
with jewel-designs in red and green 
lights; mistletoe, holly, stack high the 
sidewalks on each side of the flower 
stands. The beautiful Native Daugh- 



THE NATIVE SON 69 

ter, eyes dancing, lips smiling, dressed 
with much color and more c/iicy is 
everywhere. And everywhere too, 
crowding the streets, thronging the 
cafes, jamming the theatres, flooding 
the parks, filling the endless files of 
motor-car, until before your very eyes, 
''the city'' seems to spawn men, is — 

Generous, genial, gay; handsome; 
frank and fine ; careless and care-free ; 
vital, virile, vigorcrus; engaging and 
debonair; witty and winning and wise; 
humorous and human; kindly and 
courteous; high-minded, high-hearted, 
high-spirited; here's to him! Ladies, 
this toast must be drunk standing — 
the Native Son. 



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